Link Building in 2017: Challenges and Solutions

The importance of link building in your search engine ranking cannot be overstated. Tell me who likes you and I’ll tell you who you are, is the modus operandi of the virtual world. It is of course about quality and not just quantity.

Back in the old days, the 90s and early 2000 the virtual world was still considered a limited place. Finding relevant information about what you were looking for was a challenge. But Google came to change all that with its massive search engine and positioned itself as being the king of search engines.

In an ideal world you would rank well and all search engines, although what you’re mainly looking for is to rank well on Google, which covers 80% of all online searches worldwide, in comparison to Yahoo, which covers 8%, and Bing,which covers 6%. If you rank well on Google, you can comfortably say that you have the market covered.

But what are the challenges of link building in 2017?

Google knows the power that it holds over users and websites, and for years it has been creating algorithms to shoot down websites that are not worthy of good ranking. Websites that succumb to black hat link building tactics can expect to be found out and penalised. This is considered SEO hell, and is why smart SEO services must be conscious of avoiding such tactics, lest their clients suffer from an angry Google algorithm.

There are some things that can be done to help make sure that the links built to your business are approved by the Google algorithms, as well as encouraging potential customers to actually click on the link. One way of doing this includes using something similar to this branded url shortener. That’s because customers are more likely to click on the links if they can see the brand name.

Challenge #1

There’s Too Much Content Online

In today’s times, there are over ONE BILLION websites, and Google stores information of 30 trillion pages in the Google Index. Which means that competition is hard.

Once you’ve segregate them by niche and language, you’ll still be competing against millions of websites. And rivalry is only getting harder by the minute. Every minute 571 new websites are being created, and around 2 million blog posts are being written every single day. With these numbers, you can realise what you’re facing in the battle for good positioning within search engines.

Solution #1

How To Stand Out

Content isn’t just about quantity, it’s about quality and engagement. Creating exceptional, authoritative pieces is like laying the foundation for natural link building. When you produce outstanding articles, you establish yourself as a go-to source, making others more inclined to link back to your content. Further, when this content is optimized using the Best SEO Tool and effective strategies, it can help you stand out from the crowd and draw more engagement.

In addition, you can also WANT to be linked to big autoreactive websites, those are the ones that will give you a huge popularity boost and increase your SEO juice. To put things into an analogy it would be something like getting Justin Bieber to mention your name and/or date you, you would go from being a nobody, to having your name all over the tabloids and maybe a few interviews.

In the virtual world popularity contest, things won’t be as dramatic as in the real world. But it works similarly. If you could get a link from a big authoritative site, you would not only get a lot of traffic to your site, for that link will also boost your presence within the search engines. You can also click here to find out more, or if you want to get in contact with someone to do this for you.

Challenge #2

How to Get a Big Site to Mention My Website?

This is where it become tricky and where the hard part begins. Big websites are constantly creating content, interviewing experts on different subjects and linking to people or websites that they consider important to mention in an article. You somehow want to get your name there. You want and need them to mention you by some means. Get them to want to relate to you.

Solution #2

You Need to be Newsworthy

As an example, if The Guardian is doing an article on cakes and you have a cake business and created the world’s tallest cake, they will most likely link to you because they’ll mention you somehow. This happens naturally. You having the biggest cake ever made will be newsworthy and will most likely get you mentions on several news outlets and big autoreactive websites. You’ve probably seen how many businesses will try different ways of getting their name out there by creating the biggest pizza, the largest coffee, etc. They’re not just focusing their marketing strategies on creating branding, but also on creating awareness.

This has several benefits like not only getting your name out there, but when it comes to the virtual world it gets your name on several news outlets, which means links, which means…. YES! You guessed! Link juice!

Challenge #3

Guest Posting is Becoming Harder

Yes! Guest posting in an excellent way of saving yourself thousands of dollars for getting your link in a high authoritative site. However, sites are not dumb, it’s very likely that you’ll write an amazing piece of content and hope that a site will post it for free and link back to your business. They know that is free advertising, so many will avoid doing it unless of course is a personal blog or the site is not business related. However, you have a business, you are a master at what you’re talking about, you want to guest post. But how do you do it when they see you as trying to get free advertising?

Solution #3

Do It Natural

First, don’t send the article from your business email this automatically looks business related. Send it from a personal Gmail or Yahoo account. Make the article seem very natural and not advertorial at all. Keep in mind that you’re not doing a guest post for advertising purposes, but for getting link juice and hopefully some traffic back to your site.

Don’t link to the front page, since that generally looks very advertorial. Find a way of discreetly inserting the link into the article in a way that seems informational. Also keep in mind that to make it natural you need to add some extra links in there. Link to big sites that don’t represent a competition to you but that will blend in with the rest of the article and will make your link seem simply informational.

It’s very likely that some sites will decline, but if you have patience you’ll eventually find one that will post it.